Know Your Trading Orders

There are many ways (depending on your brokers’ platform) to place your orders. Here I will only touch on the four usual types of orders that I normally use at FXPrimus to trade in my live account.

a. Market Order
b. Take Profit Order
c. Stop Loss Order
d. Pending Order

Market Order

It is an immediate order placed to enter or exit the market at the current market price.

In the below diagram, when you click on the New Order button and choose the Instant Execution option under Type, you are creating a Market Order with EUR/USD priced at (BID)1.3949/1.3952(ASK).

It means in order to buy 1 unit of euro, you need to pay 1.3952 USD. 1.3952 is also the known as the ask price. It’s the price that dealer willing to sell. Conversely, if you would like to sell euro against US dollar, you would sell at 1.3949. It’s also known as the bid price, meaning it is the price that dealer willing to buy from you.

The current bid/ask price is called the market price and entering at one of those prices is a called a Market Order. The Forex broker in this instance FXPrimus earns through the differences between bid and ask prices. Therefore, you must wait for the price to come up to (BID)1.3949/1.3952(ASK) in order to breakeven.

Take Profit Order

It is also known as a Limit Order. Based on your strategy, it is an order that is used to exit the market at a predetermined price, realizing a profit when the security price has reached a preset level.

For example, EUR/USD is trading at 1.3949/1.3952. You enter a market order to buy the Euro at 1.3952. Based on your strategy, you can preset a limit order (take profit) where your position is automatically closed at that price. If you set your limit at 1.3972, when EUR/USD price reaches 1.3972/1.3975, you will be taken out of the market with a profit of 20 pips. 1.3972[close price] -1.3952 [entry price] = 20pips.

Stop Loss Order

Any good Forex trading strategy will have a good money management in place so that when you are wrong about the trade, you can be exit early to preserve capital. As such, a stop-loss order also known as a limit order, is always used for minimizing losses if the price has started to move against your position.

If the security price reaches this level, the position will be closed automatically.

For example, EUR/USD is trading at 1.3949/1.3952. You enter a market order to buy the Euro at 1.3952. After you have predetermined your stop loss price, you can preset a close price (stop-loss order) where your position is automatically closed at that price.

If you set your stop-loss at 1.3932, when EUR/USD price reaches 1.3932/1.3935, you will be taken out of the market will a loss of 20 pips. 1.3952 [entry price] -1.3932 [close price] = 20 pips.

During volatile market times, your stop order may not be able to be honored at the exact price desired, and you will receive the next best executable price. Therefore, before any red coded news, especially Non Farm Payroll, which happens every first Friday of every month, I would normally get out of any trade two hours before the news being announced.

Pending Order
When you enter a pending order, you are telling the broker that you want to buy or sell a currency pair at a pre-defined price that may be reached in the future. Normally this type of order is used when you want to get into a position at a later time when a certain entry price from your strategy has been reached and you are not free to wait.

There are four types of pending orders:

Buy Limit
– Activate a BUY position when the future “ASK” price is equal to the pre-defined value.

– This desired Buy Limit price is lower than the current price, in anticipation of the price, having fallen to a certain level, increasing.

For example, as can be seen from the below chart, the current price is now at 1.4028. If your strategy shows there is a valid signal to be entered at 1.4006 and you do not want to sit and wait for the price to fall from 1.4028 to 1.4006 and then enter a market order, you can always put a Buy Limit Order at 1.4006 at the platform without having to wait till the price drops to that level.

Create on New Order – Choose Pending Order under Type – Then choose Buy Limit under Pending Type option.

Sell Limit
– Activate a SELL position when the future “BID” price is equal to the pre-defined value.

– This desired Sell Limit price is higher than the current price, in anticipation of the price, having increased to a certain level, falling.

For example, as can be seen from the below chart, the current price is now at 1.4065. If your strategy shows there is a valid signal to go short at 1.4121 and you do not want to sit and wait for the price to rise from 1.4065 to 1.4121 and then enter a market order, you can always put a Sell Limit Order at 1.4121 at the platform without having to wait till the price rises to that level. In this way, once the Sell Limit price 1.4121 has been reached, the MT4 will create a Sell Market Order automatically in anticipation that the trend will reverse after 1.4121 has been reached.

Below are the steps on how to enter a Sell Limit Pending Order at FXPrimus MT4 platform.

Create on New Order – Choose Pending Order under Type – Then choose Sell Limit under Pending Type option.

Buy Stop

– Activate a BUY position when the future “ASK” price is equal to the pre-defined value.

– This desired Buy Stop price is higher than the current price, in anticipation of the price, having risen to a certain level, increasing further.

For example, as can be seen from the below chart, the current price is now at 1.4058. If your strategy shows there is a valid signal to be entered at 1.4155 and anticipate that once 1.4155 has been broken, the price will go even upper and you do not want to sit and wait for the price to rise from 1.4058 to 1.4155 and then enter a market order, you can always put a Buy Stop Order at 1.4155 at the platform without having to wait till the price rises to that level.

Below are the steps on how to enter a Buy Stop Pending Order at FXPrimus MT4 platform.

Create on New Order – Choose Pending Order under Type – Then choose Buy Stop under Pending Type option.

Sell Stop

– Activate a Sell position when the future “BID” price is equal to the pre-defined value.

– This desired Sell Stop price is lower than the current price, in anticipation of the price, having fallen to a certain level, fall even further.

For example, as can be seen from the below chart, the current price is now at 1.4053. If your strategy shows there is a valid signal to be entered at 1.3855 and anticipate that once 1.3855 has been broken, the price will go even lower and you do not want to sit and wait for the price to drop from 1.4053 to 1.3855 and then enter a market order, you can always put a Sell Stop Order at 1.3855 at the platform without having to wait for the price to fall to that level.

Below are the steps on how to enter a Sell Stop Pending Order at FXPrimus MT4 platform.

Create on New Order – Choose Pending Order under Type – Then choose Sell Stop under Pending Type option.